This is a fine example of Doug Lawley’s painting at Sable Island. He was a teacher by profession, enjoying a lengthy career retiring as vice principal at Montreal’s Westmount High School. He was brought out of retirement by a former student to teach Latin at a private school, Lower Canada College. Those of us who had the pleasure of being a student of Lawley’s will confirm that for him horses were everything. While students did tests in his classroom, Mr Lawley drew incessantly and exclusively drawings of horses. In Montreal, confined by the academic calendar, his horses were found on Mount Royal or outside McGill’s Roddick Gates pulling caleches. Holidays allowed him to travel farther afield, sometimes Charlevoix, other times the Laurentians or Eastern Townships.

Mr. Lawley became ambitious to visit Sable Island in order to paint the legendary wild ponies. He was finally able to secure permission from the Department of Fisheries to visit the island. At this time, before the oil companies were on the scene, Sable Island was a sanctuary for the ponies. Mr. Lawley had done extensive research into their origin and he had found that their history very probably went back to the year 1518 when Baron de Lery of France left some domestic animals on the island after attempting to establish a settlement there. The conclusions of his research may not be 100% accurate according to more current studies by others.

The Island subsequently became the scene of some two hundred and fifty shipwrecks which cost the loss of ten thousand lives. Lawley flew over the Island several times before landing to study the ponies close up. He was intrigued by the way the animals had evolved over the centuries to survive in the harsh climate. These ponies developed very thick hides to protect them from the fierce winds and storms. Also, in order to be more mobile in the sand dunes, sometimes rising to a height of seventy or eighty feet, they developed hooves similar to those of camels. He did a series of paintings of the ponies wandering among the sand dunes. His Sable Island paintings were exhibited at his first one man show, held at the Dominion Gallery, Montreal, in April of 1962.